CHAPTER XXX

'GOOD MORNING, IUDA,' I SAID, SOFTLY.

Iuda lifted his head. He looked decrepit. His hair was unwashed and matted, his chin was unshaven and his complexion was sallow – I doubted whether he had 'eaten' for days. His jaw was swollen with the bruise of a recent, heavy blow. Yet still he smiled.

'Good morning, Aleksei Ivanovich.'

'Has he tried anything?' I said to one of his guards.

'Nothing, sir. He kept asking when you would come, but I shut him up.' He mimicked the action of a blow with the butt of his musket. Iuda winced at the appropriate moment, joining in the mime so as to mock it. He glanced momentarily up at the guard's face, then averted his eyes.

'Was he armed?' I asked.

'Just this.' The guard reached into his knapsack and handed me the double-bladed knife that I had seen in Iuda's hand before. 'It's an odd thing, don't you think, sir? I can't see the practical use for it.'

'That's one of the things I intend to find out.'

'Do you want us to stay close, sir?' he asked. It was refreshing to be once again amongst men who were so trustworthy and so steadfast, though his suggestion might also have been motivated by self-interest. Keeping close to us would mean keeping close to the fire. Both guards looked pale and deathly cold, their greatcoats ' buttoned tight up to their chins to keep in what warmth they could. Even so, my own concerns overcame my sympathy for them.

'Not too close,' I said. 'For reasons you'll understand, it's best that you don't hear what we discuss.' He nodded earnestly. I had no doubt that he would stand just on the far side of earshot, but I would speak to Iuda in French to be on the safe side. 'But if he does turn nasty, you'll need to be ready – for your own sakes as well as mine.'

All around us, the camp was in turmoil. Tents were being taken down. Horses were being harnessed to guns. Baggage was being loaded on to wagons. The activity of all was enough to keep them warm despite the frozen night air, but for Iuda and myself, and the two guards who stood apart, both at some distance from us, the fire provided the only heat.

I sat down opposite Iuda as his guards moved warily away. I pondered how to start, hoping that he might say something, but he remained silent, looking at the ground. Despite his circumstances, he still had an air of victory about him. Then I realized why. As far as he knew, his trick with Margarita had worked – I had believed Domnikiia to be a vampire and had killed her.

'Aren't you going to tell me that Domnikiia was never a vampire?' I asked him. He frowned briefly. The name was unfamiliar to him. Then he made the connection to Dominique.

'It seems you're already aware of it,' he replied.

'She's alive and well, you know.'

'I don't doubt it,' he said, nonplussed.

'Oh, come on, Iuda. I'm sure you have your pride, but I think you can be honest now. These are your last moments on earth – don't waste them. I know you intended me to see your performance with Margarita.'

'I won't waste them, Lyosha. Neither should you. You're right, though, I did know you were watching at the window.'

'And you expected me to march right in there and ram a stake straight through Domnikiia's heart, and then regret it for the rest of my life.'

'Do you play chess at all, Lyosha?' he asked.

'Some,' I replied.

'When you form a plan of attack – equally, when you plan an attack in a real battle – do you see it through (in your mind) to a single end, or does your plan branch with the varying assumptions about how your opponent might react?'

'It branches, of course – though I'd always assume it most likely that my opponent would make the best move.' I was surprised at how quickly Iuda had managed to take the reins of the conversation.

'Exactly. And it's disappointing, isn't it, when he doesn't play the best move – when he falls into some trivial trap you threw in his way, not with any real intent of entrapping him, but simply to force him along the path you had chosen? He doesn't in the end rob you of the victory, but robs you of the pleasure of demonstrating the full brilliance of your plan.'

'I think that depends on whether you're the sort of person who prefers the game or the victory,' I said.

'Clearly, without the victory, the game is nothing,' he replied, nodding in agreement. 'But the reverse is also true. And don't tell me that you don't enjoy the game, Aleksei Ivanovich. You've had many opportunities to go for the swift conclusion, but you've not taken them.'

'Haven't I?'

'Perhaps it's just caution on your part.'

I felt the same sense of unease in myself and the same confidence in him that I had done during our meeting at the crossroads. Here, though, I could see no reason for him to be confident. This was my territory. There was no hanging cadaver that was going to spring to his aid. Perhaps he was expecting something of the sort. Perhaps he was unaware that Foma was dead. That was it. This was part of a plan where Foma would come to his rescue. It would be a pleasure to see how he reacted to news of Foma's death, but for now I chose – as one cannot in the game of chess – to keep that card up my sleeve. In chess one can disguise one's plans, but not hide them.

'And so your scene with Margarita was just a sideshow – one of these little traps that I didn't fall into?' I asked.

'You have always played the better move when you've been given the choice. Only an idiot would kill the woman he loved without being sure she was a vampire.' It was the very word Domnikiia had used. As he spoke he smiled as if he knew how close I had come to doing what he described.

'So what's your real plan, from which that was just a diversion? To get captured here and to die in the morning sun?'

'There are more moves to make before you will see it.'

'Chess isn't a game of bluff, Iuda. A gentleman will resign once he sees he cannot win.'

'I am, I assure you, a gentleman.'

'And all your pretence at planning,' I went on, realizing that much of what he said could be only bravura, 'it all relies on so much luck. How could you be sure I would come back to Moscow to see Domnikiia that night?'

'Because I told Pyetr and Iakov Zevedayinich I was going to see her,' he said simply.

'And you asked them to tell me, I suppose?'

'No, I instructed them not to tell you.'

'So you knew I would get it out of them?'

'There were two of them in the barn, you outside. Either they would defeat you – which would have been a disappointment, but still a victory – or you would defeat them and probably get the information from them. Which one was it that talked, by the way? I would suspect Iakov Zevedayinich.'

'It was Pyetr. I didn't give Iakov Zevedayinich the opportunity. How did you know I was there?'

'Where else would you be? I never saw you after the coach crashed, but I knew you wouldn't run away. We were not particularly stealthy in our return to the barn.'

'And no concern at all for the others. You set up Pyetr and Iakov Zevedayinich for me to kill, just to further your own ends. Are all vampires like that, Iuda, or is it just you?'

'They all had as little concern for each other as I did for them. Clearly, there are times when it is convenient to work as a pack, and sometimes it's worth making an issue over the fate of one's comrades, as we did with Maksim Sergeivich, but it's mostly for show. There is no brotherly love that would make one sacrifice himself for another.'

'It's hard to see why there's any need for your soul to be damned,' I said contemplatively. 'To feel like that must be a living hell.'

'On the contrary, it is one of the vampire's most desirable attributes. I have no idea why it is that most humans possess these feelings of affection for other humans, nor why vampires suddenly lose them. I'm sure one day some great scientist will explain it. Myself, I suspect it's something to do with the different methods of reproduction.'

I looked at him blankly. He still did not believe that these were the last minutes of his life. I picked up his knife, which I had jabbed into the snow between my feet, and inspected it. It was a simple construction – precisely as I had conceived it to be when I first saw it. Two identical, short knives had been fastened together at the handles. The handles were bound up with a long strip of leather. The bond was very firm – I could not make the blades move relative to one another. Beneath the leather there must have been something that fixed them more solidly. The blades were smoothly sharp on one side, and serrated on the other – the teeth pointing slightly backwards towards the handle – ideal, in a single blade, for cutting the fur away from an animal's carcass. Each ended in a sharp point that could be used to stab. The gap between the blades was wide enough for me to comfortably fit two fingers.

'You don't all carry these, I noticed, do you?' I asked Iuda.

'No, just me.'

'Why do you need it? Your teeth no good? Too much sugar in your diet?'

He smiled, but did not grin, and it occurred to me that I could not recall ever seeing him grin. Perhaps I was right. Perhaps he was that most pitiful of creatures, a vampire with rotten teeth.

'Not quite,' he said.

'Useful, I suppose, for cutting your chest open when you create another one of you.'

'Then, and at other times.' He was more reticent on this matter than he had been on others. Another question raised itself in my mind, and the image of my own hand driving a stake into a young woman's chest.

'Did I need to kill Margarita?' I asked. 'Was she dead when we found her, or had you made her . . . one of you?'

'She was dead,' he said calmly, his eyes fixed on mine. 'I killed her.'

'But why? Why waste the chance of turning her into a vampire?'

'I killed her because I enjoy it. But as to turning anyone into a vampire, I am sadly incapable of that.'

'And why is that? I'm sure you must far outstrip the others in your ability to persuade people to willingly take the step.' I didn't like to compliment him, but as I had long ago discovered, he was the only one of the Oprichniki who showed any real personality.

'Certainly – and that, for me, is one of the most pleasurable parts. The problem, though, is a physical one.'

'What do you mean?'

'As we have discussed before, I am not a doctor. I cannot explain how these things work. I can go through the motions but it simply does not happen, any more than it would if you were to attempt it.'

'Except that I wouldn't even want to attempt it,' I added vehemently.

'That may be the difference between us,' he smiled.

'So in the end, despite what you both did, despite her willingness, Margarita did not become a vampire. When you killed her she died as a mortal human.'

He nodded thoughtfully and then looked towards me with an intent gaze, pinching his bottom lip between his fingers, indifferent to the inconvenience of his bound hands. I was reminded of the discussion of chess he had introduced earlier. He was a player who had made a move and was now trying to determine whether I, his opponent, had seen the full ramifications of it.

'What were you doing when you were captured?' I asked.

'Spying for the French.'

'Really?' I laughed.

'Really. I need to leave Russia. They are leaving Russia, or at least trying to. I can help them while our interests coincide.'

'It can't help you or them much for you to be captured. I presume that wasn't part of the plan.'

'No, you're right, it wasn't. Not until I happened to see you trotting down the road towards the camp. Then I knew I just had to see you one more time.'

So – assuming that he was telling the truth – he had not been following me. It had simply been luck that we had found each other again, though a luck that we had both been trying to manufacture. That he had not been following me made it all the more likely that he did not yet know about the death of Foma. I felt sure now that there was no escape for him.

'One more time before you died,' I added.

'One more time before I left your country,' he countered. 'Being the only one of us left, I feel it my duty.'

'The only one left?'

'Well, you've told me about Pyetr and Iakov Zevedayinich, and I presume that Dmitry has killed Foma by now.'

I nodded. 'Foma's dead.' I was deflated, but I had to hide it. If Foma was not part of Iuda's escape plan, then what was? I recalled the possibility that he might have some human collaborator. If he did, and he was a Russian, then the man would have had little trouble infiltrating this camp. Was that the basis of Iuda's confidence, or was it mere bluff? He glanced at the two guards, some way away on either side of him, as if judging how far he could run before they could catch him.

'Dmitry Fetyukovich proved to be a startlingly brave man,' Iuda continued. 'To kill a vampire is one thing, but to take one alive is quite another.'

'You saw it happen?'

'Oh yes.'

'And you did nothing to help Foma?'

'Why should I? It wasn't worth risking my life. Dmitry believed that I would come and rescue Foma, but he really didn't understand. As I said to you, even a vampire would not risk his life to save another vampire. I take it, then, that you've seen Dmitry. Is he here with you?'

'No, he's not here,' I replied. 'Just tell me, Iuda. How do you plan to escape?'

He deliberately misinterpreted the question. 'Well, as far as I understand it, Napoleon's move to the south is a feint. Already Tchitchagov has set out to follow him on the far bank of the Berezina, and Kutuzov will soon be heading that way too.'

Although it wasn't what I had been trying to find out, it was vital information nonetheless. I followed the line that Iuda had begun. 'Whereas Bonaparte's real plan is what?' I asked.

'Ah!' said Iuda with a smile. 'See how the wily interrogator tricks his quarry into revealing all!' He leaned forward and winked with an air of conspiracy. 'Between you and me, Lyosha, he's found a ford, upstream at a place called Studienka. It'll still need bridging of course, but it should get them across.'

'Get him across,' I responded cynically.

'How do you mean?'

'There's not much of the Grande Armée left compared with what came. Thirty thousand out of half a million? It's about the emperor, not the army now.'

'And why not? Napoleon is a great man.'

'You think so?'

'He makes my life a lot easier.'

'So Dmitry was quite wrong. You were never on our side?' I asked, feeling more vindicated than shocked by the proposition.

'Not at all. If Napoleon had defeated Russia it would have meant French hegemony over the whole of Europe. And that would have meant peace – a peace you and I would have despised for different reasons, but nonetheless inimical to both of our lifestyles. True, there would still be war with Britain, but I've never been much use at sea.'

'So you just always support the underdog?'

'I like to help maintain the balance of power.'

'So now you switch sides to France when she is weak?'

'Exactly.'

'How long have you been doing this?' I asked with genuine curiosity. 'How many times have you switched sides? How many wars have you tried to perpetuate for your own ends?' I was prevaricating unnecessarily. 'What I mean is, Iuda, when did you become a vampire?'

'An interesting question,' he replied, but one which he was not going to answer.

I had not noticed it begin, but as our conversation paused, I heard that the few birds which for some reason chose to remain in the trees during the winter months had begun their daily song.

The pre-dawn dark blue of the sky was only just becoming visible, but already they had noticed it and reacted to it. I felt a little sorry. There was so much more that I wanted to ask of Iuda and discover from him, but I could not afford to be sentimental. I could so easily learn to regret any opportunity for survival that I might offer him.

'Might I be allowed to smoke?' he asked politely.

I could see no harm in it. I shouted to the guard, 'Have you got a pipe? Or a cigar?' He came over and handed me a cigar. It was a thin, withered offering – much like the man who offered it – made à l'Espagnole, with just paper to wrap it. It was possibly all he had. I gave a coin in exchange, paying – in my sympathy for his instinctive willingness to hand over even his personal possessions at a senior officer's behest – a similar price to that I would have received during my days as a tobacco vendor in occupied Moscow.

Again Iuda eyed the guard, looking for a chance to flee. I lit the cigar from the fire and offered it to Iuda. He gestured to me with his bound hands and gave an expression of humble entreaty. I placed the cigar between my lips and then cut his hands free with his own knife, before handing the cigar to him. His feet were still tied, and I had the guards with me. Besides, it would soon be dawn and Iuda would be no more threat to anyone. I felt safe.

'Thank you,' he said, inhaling deeply. I sat back down and threw the knife once again into the snow between my feet. Knowing that time was short, I searched my brain for any other questions I could put to him. One immediately occurred to me.

'How was it that you managed to get from Kurilovo back to Moscow so quickly?'

'By horse,' he answered simply. 'The same as you.'

'But it took me eight hours, and you got there ahead of me.'

'Well, I left before you did.'

'What I mean is,' I asked, annoyed that he was, quite sincerely, missing my point, 'how did you travel in daylight?'

'Ah, I see. One of the many curses that the vampire must put up with. I often wonder whether there are any advantages to it at all.'

'The immortality, surely,' I said. It was Domnikiia's voice that had put it in my head.

'Ideally, yes, but not in practical terms. Did Pyetr prove to be immortal? Or Matfei? And what about that boy – Pavel? His vampire existence spanned only a few weeks. Vampires are so easy to kill.'

'I've not found it so easy.'

'Oh, you have, Lyosha! Once you know what to do. And even if you don't, the daylight thing must be a misery. Thousands must die by accident just because someone happens to open the curtains.' He failed to conceal the smirk that broke on his face, pleased at his own ridicule.

'So why do people willingly choose that path?' I asked.

'As you say, some are fools who do it for the immortality. Others do it for the liberty.'

'Liberty?'

'Yes, liberty. I doubt vampires have any desire for equality and I know that they have no conception of fraternity, but isn't liberty what all men seek?'

It was as though he had been reading my mind as I had lain beside Domnikiia, waiting to join her in that world of immoral immortality. Still I was compelled to hear what Iuda had to say – to understand what the appeal was that could turn a man willingly into a monster. 'Liberty from what?' I asked.

'Most men want liberty from many different things, but all seek – and few achieve – liberty from themselves. That is what the man who drinks the warm, fresh blood of a vampire seeks. That is what I too have found – to be unconstrained by conscience or by God – to revel in the ultimate pleasure that lies in the pain of others, both as its witness and its instigator, without the clammy undertow of one's own . . . sentiment.' He spoke the final word as though it tasted of rotting fish, then he smiled. 'You of all people, Lyosha, know that.'

He glanced pointedly at the scars on my left hand as he spoke, but I knew that he could not be aware how much his words rang true.

'And that makes becoming a vampire worthwhile?' I asked, both fascinated and repelled by what he had said.

He paused and bent his head forward. Its shadow, long and distorted in the low sun behind him, reached as far as my feet.

'I don't know,' he said wearily. 'There are so many restrictions – so much that they must miss out on. The desire to kill is so much intermingled with the desire to eat – much like in humans. The first kill of the night delights both predilections, but as they become less hungry, they also lose (to an extent) the urge to kill. By surfeiting, the appetite sickens. How much better it is to separate the two; to eat for hunger and to kill for pleasure. Do you hunt, Lyosha?'

'Occasionally,' I said.

'Then perhaps you will understand what I mean. More than that, though, there are straightforward, mechanical problems that make the life of a vampire so unappealing. For instance, have you ever considered, Lyosha, that a vampire can never look into the eyes of his victim as life departs? You can, and I'm sure you have. You know the experience of seeing a man's face as, thanks to you, he breathes his last. Whether you count it as a pleasure or not, you know the experience. A vampire must bite at the neck, and so can never take that pleasure.

'Now, with my knife . . .' He leaned forward, casting his cigar aside, and reached forward for the knife. I was so enthralled by what he was saying and his movement was so appropriate to the conversation, that I almost let him. Only at the last moment did I kick his hand to one side. He sat back upright and raised his palms to me in apology. The guard I had spoken to glanced towards us at the movement, but did nothing.

'With my knife,' Iuda continued, 'I can inflict all the pain that a vampire can with his teeth and so much more, and yet I'm still free to gaze into the face of my companion and see every exquisite reaction to every excruciating action I perform. And by joining up with the others – the Oprichniki, I believe you called us as a group – I had eleven other so much more brutal weapons whom I could let get on with inflicting the pain, whilst I sat back and experienced the pleasure.'

As he spoke, I found myself confronted with the memory of the scene in the barn near Kurilovo. Each of the Oprichniki had bowed to Iuda's every suggestion of what they should do. He had scarcely touched the man or ever tasted his flesh, and yet he had been the one who had taken the most pleasure from the situation. The sun, now risen in the east behind Iuda's head, made to seem larger by its low declination, formed an ironic halo.

'What freedom, I wonder, do they really have – the vampires – that I have not also achieved?' asked Iuda.

'Achieved?'

'You are right, as ever, Lyosha. I cannot claim it as any achievement. It is something I have always had – something I was born with – something that most men can only gain by becoming a vampire. I have the best of both worlds. I can bask in the sun. I can eat a normal meal. I could even father a child if I wanted. Yet still I can indulge in the ultimate bliss that lies in the unutterable, absolute, unfettered suffering of another human being.'

'Did the other vampires never recognize you for what you are?' I asked.

'For what I am? I could ask the same question of you. You had no idea that the twelve of us were vampires at first. And then when you did, you had no idea that I was not. There's no magic to it. I act as they do. I feel as they do. I kill as they do. They're not going to notice that occasionally I like to go outside during the day – not without killing themselves in the process. Zmyeevich, of course, is a different matter. He's been a vampire for a long, long time. But whatever his suspicions about me may have been, he has his own reasons for not pursuing them.'

I sat in silence, facing him. Still today, I cannot determine exactly when during the conversation the truth had come to me. It was astonishing, but not revolutionary. Iuda was exactly what he claimed he was. He was not a vampire in much the same way that Maksim was not French. He aspired to be a vampire. He behaved like a vampire. But occasionally he was able to benefit from the fact that he was not a vampire. Maks himself had known that he deserved to be treated as though he were French. Similarly, though he might in some minor, legalistic way be human, Iuda deserved to be treated as though he were a vampire. The problem was that the light of the sun could no longer do the work for me. It was a problem and a pleasure. I would be happy to see him die in a more traditional manner.

I rose to my feet and faced him. 'I think we should be able to arrange a firing squad before we break camp. You are, after all, a French spy.' I began to raise my hand to summon the guard.

Iuda frowned and turned away from me with a look of impatient disappointment on his face. He shook his head and tutted to himself quietly. 'So, you see, there was never any prospect of her becoming a vampire,' he said. There was some point on to which our conversation had not turned, and he wanted it to.

'Margarita, you mean?'

'I wonder when it was she realized that she was unchanged – that she would remain mortal.'

'I think you demonstrated her mortality pretty quickly,' I snapped.

'What do you mean?'

'By killing her straight after.'

Iuda smiled a tight, knowing smile that barely resisted breaking into a laugh. 'Tell me, Lyosha,' he asked. 'What was it that first made you believe that it was not Dominique you had seen me with at the window?'

I thought about it for a moment, but there was no trick to it – the answer was obvious. 'The fact that she hadn't become a vampire.'

'Which means . . .'

'Which means?'

Iuda sighed. 'It's really no fun for me if you can't be bothered to work it out for yourself.' I looked at him blankly. 'You concluded that Dominique had not been with me because if she had been with a vampire she would have become a vampire,' he explained, like a schoolteacher.

I don't know whether I had been dull-witted or whether it was a conclusion that I wanted to avoid coming to, but now Iuda had brought it to a point where I could not ignore it. I sank back on to my seat. Could it have after all been Domnikiia that I had seen with Iuda at the window and not Margarita? Of course she had not become a vampire; Iuda had no ability to make her into one. She could have sucked every last drop of blood from the wound in his chest and it would have had no effect.

But she had believed that it would. Had she awoken that morning with exactly the same sense of surprise that I had later felt, as she discovered there had been no change in her? Had she found to her horror that she could stand comfortably in the bright morning sunlight and begun to cry as she realized that it meant she would still one day die a mortal death? She would have had to think quickly to then pretend that it was Margarita that I had seen. No, that was impossible. She must have decided to say it was Margarita beforehand. Either Iuda had told her to, or they had planned it together. There had been a great deal of careful choreography to ensure that, watching from across the square, I only ever saw Domnikiia from behind. Had Margarita known about the plan? Domnikiia had seemed genuinely shocked when we had found Margarita's body. Genuinely? How could I now regard anything about her as being genuine? A woman who would gladly become a vampire would hardly baulk at the death of her best friend being a part of the process.

It could not be true, and yet I could not see any fault in it. I myself had been sure it was Domnikiia that I had seen with Iuda right up until the point I had discovered she was not a vampire. Now I had a better explanation for that. Was I really fool enough to mistake Margarita for Domnikiia just because their hair was similar – I who knew every inch of Domnikiia's body? There must have been something more that I had seen, without consciously registering, that had told me it was Domnikiia, and now I knew it to be true. All her sorrow and anguish in the days that followed had been very convincing, but then, that was her speciality. I heard Domnikiia speaking to me, but she only repeated one whispered word over and over. How much she must have been laughing to herself when she had first said it to me. 'Prostak! Prostak! Prostak!'

Iuda placed a consolatory hand on my knee, saying, 'She did it for you, Lyosha. She thought she could be with you for ever.' He was standing now. At some point, unnoticed by me, he had retrieved his knife and had cut the ropes around his feet with it. I heard a shout from one of the soldiers guarding us to the other, but he was too late. The other had momentarily turned his back on us and Iuda was now behind him. A brief stroke from Iuda's toothed blades across his neck and he fell to the ground, the pure, white snow around him sullied by an ever-growing stain of red as blood haemorrhaged from his wounded neck, unhindered by the grasping of his dying hands.

The other soldier had raised his musket, but had been hesitant to fire while he might hit his comrade. Now he fired, but it was too late. Iuda was on the move again, keeping low and changing direction again and again. I set off in pursuit. The remaining guard did likewise, some paces behind me. The rest of the camp, consumed by their preparations for departure, did not at first notice what was happening, but soon our shouts alerted them to the fugitive. Those who threw themselves in Iuda's way offered little impediment to him. He was far more brutal and effective with his knife than any vampire could have been with its teeth. Some men tackled him with swords and bayonets, but he showed no fear, and though some of the blades hit their mark, he seemed to show little discomfort either. None of the wounds was deep enough to cause serious injury, and while posing as a vampire he had clearly learned to control his pain – along with so many other feelings – lest his humanity should be discovered.

We were now beyond the edge of the camp, almost at woodland in which Iuda could easily hide himself. The guard who had been pursuing a little way behind, younger and fitter than I was, had now caught up and overtaken me. Having discharged his musket, he had found no time to reload, and so now had only his bayonet as a weapon. He was within striking distance of Iuda when Iuda stopped and turned. The soldier had no time to stop himself. He had not been aiming his bayonet and so it glided harmlessly past Iuda's side. As he turned, Iuda brought forward his hand and the soldier ran straight on to Iuda's knife. It penetrated just below his breastbone, embedding itself deep behind his ribcage. With the force of the blow, the soldier was lifted off his feet, his back arched in agony and his limbs splayed out limply as life began to retreat from them. With a jerk of his arm, Iuda threw the man off his knife and I heard the tearing, rasping sound of its teeth making the wound even greater on exit than it had been on entry.

Iuda turned and continued to run, but I was already upon him. I launched myself towards him and grabbed him around the waist. We both fell to the ground and my face was filled with snow, blinding me. I knelt up and wiped the snow from my eyes, just in time to see Iuda's hand scything towards me, the toothed blades presented, not to stab but to slash. I flung myself backwards, flicking my head away from him. As I fell, I felt a searing pain in my left cheek where the blades connected. I fell to my back, breathing deeply, and noticed as I breathed that air was coming in through my wounded cheek as well as through my mouth.

I pushed myself up in preparation to avoid Iuda's next blow, but it did not come. A shot rang out from behind me, hitting Iuda in the arm. He turned and fled into the woods, leaving me to live with the misery that he had created for me.